Well I am a little behind posting this on Wednesday night, but I thought I would recap last Sunday morning when I had the privilege of speaking to our College and High School groups on the second half of James 2. If you are not familiar with the passage, you can read it by clicking here.

It is a pretty interesting passage and some people even think that it contradicts the Bible. This is not the case however, and James actually compliments the rest of scripture very well. These were my main points:

1) Works are not the cause of salvation, but rather, they are the result of it.

2) Faith, by definition, requires works. If you claim to have faith, you are saying that you believe God is real, and that He is who He says He is. God’s qualities include all-loving, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. If we go against God, we are either saying we think we are smarter than God (not good faith!) or that God is not good (also not good faith!)

3) Faith in a loving God also includes loving Him in return. If we love Him, we will obey His commands (John 14:23). This is obvious. For instance, I love my wife and because of that I actually want to serve her.

4) If we focus too much on doing works, we will miss out on God and end up with an empty and cold religion.

5) Instead, there is one thing to focus on: living life in Jesus’s presence (Luke 10:38-42) We tend to get caught up and distracted by the details, but when we focus on God, works will naturally begin to happen in our life. When you experience and see the love God has for you, works will naturally come from the overflow in your life.

So thats it in a nutshell. I am not the best speaker in the world, but if you want to see the whole thing it is right here: